


conspiracy theories

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), Drunken Shenanigans, Enthusiastic Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Hotel Sex, Older Man/Younger Woman, POV Phil Coulson, Resolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 03:19:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10867965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Daisy and Coulson have a drink and end up chatting about their favorite subject: wacky conspiracy theories.





	conspiracy theories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skyepilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/gifts).



**1.**

“So. Harvey Lee Oswald: lone gunman or patsy?”

Coulson puts down his drink, wondering if he was distracted and has missed something of the conversation. Daisy looks like she is just picking up on something they’ve been discussing.

“What?”

She shifts her seat closer to his, like she’s about to reveal a secret. Coulson looks around, professional reflexes. Most of the people who were at the Inhuman symposium have already gone up to their hotel rooms, but he and Daisy decided to stay for one last drink. A proper drink, after all the champagne.

“I wasn’t going to say anything before, because you were recovering from being… over there,” she says, the way she always talks carefully about and around his experiences in Radcliffe’s digital world. “But now it’s been a while and… I can’t believe you were a conspiracy nut!”

He thinks he feels heat in his cheeks, but he’s not sure it’s him or the other Phil Coulson, who suffered from a permanent state of blushing. The truth is Daisy is not wrong, that other him was a conspiracy theory fan, and from before Hydra rose to power, that’s why he had developed an interest in history, always fascinated, always naive, but it goes way back, back to where that Coulson’s and his own life intersect.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, I used to be a conspiracy theorist in my youth,” Daisy comments, taking a sip of her drink.

“In your youth? Do you remember how we met?”

She flashes him a disarmingly wide smile, like that event is a good memory. How can it be, Coulson wonders, some days it’s like meeting him has only brought Daisy pain.

“But I was right about all my theories on SHIELD. You _were_ shady company men covering up stuff like Puente Antiguo. I mean really crazy, out there stuff.”

Coulson kind of smiles, remembering all those times he had rolled his eyes at how close to the truth the Rising Tide and their guessing have come, and how inconvenient for him. The guessing being done, most probably, by Daisy. He smiles at that thought, yes.

“I grew up in the 70s. Kind of hard not to be into conspiracies back then,” he says, a bit defensively.

“The golden years,” she says. “Operation Snow White. The Victor Marchetti interview, the-”

“The whole USA government…”

Daisy snorts. It sounds like a hiccup-chuckle.

“You do realize you’ve worked for the government most of your life. Right?”

He worked _for Hydra_ most of his life, actually. But he doesn’t want to say something that cynical in front of Daisy.

“You ended up in the same place,” he comments instead.

Two conspiracy theory nuts with a government paycheck. Well, that’s for the periods where they do get paid, when they are no busy being public menaces or traitors.

“And now here we are in Berlin, trying to convince the governments of the world there is not _Inhuman conspiracy_ to replace power figures with our own people,” Daisy says, grimly, bitterly, taking a sip, a long one this time.

“People tend to believe conspiracies they already agree with…”

She gives those words an inquiring look but she utters no inquiring words. Coulson wonders if that has happened to him, here or over there, confirmation bias. Or worst nightmares.

She just agree, “Yeah,” and they both drink at the same time.

Coulson looks around. All the familiar faces are already gone. He doesn’t regret it, only protocol and good manners would tempt him to spend one minute more in these people’s company. He looks at Daisy, her dress classy, her make-up calculated to look serious, professional, even in a formal dinner. He almost misses the days she wasn’t allowed to come to the meetings where the future of her species was being discussed. At least she wouldn’t have to go through hours of thinly-veiled Inhuman hate. And all the lame euphemisms. He could see it gnawing at her, hour after hour. She is good at not letting it show, how much it weights on her. But it’s late and it’s only him here and it’s their second drink and sometimes she forgets to pull back the wrong expression on her face.

“The 90s were also a time ripe for conspiracies,” he tells her. It’s true but also a reminder that their childhoods are over twenty years apart.

“Sure, but I got into it because of my mysterious vanishing parents,” Daisy replies, and god, of course, he’s an idiot, this was necessity for her, not a hobby. She tilts her head, “Well, that and Fox Mulder.”

He lets out a chuckle. Figures.

“Don’t tell me you buy the stuff about Roswell, the whole shebang?”

She reaches across the table again, that gesture like they are sharing a dangerous secret again. They’ve done that, in real life, not in a joke conversation.

“Reality is far more sinister than aliens,” Daisy whispers conspiratorially.

He leans back on his chair. “Really?”

He wonders if she has gotten a glimpse into SHIELD’s files on the issue. Sinister indeed.

“You have much to learn, Agent Coulson.”

He grabs his glass again.

“Maybe you can teach me.”

 

**2.**

She lets out a hiccup, two, hand over her mouth, like worried it might go on. It doesn’t, and she laughs, and Coulson plays with the button of the jacket she left over the chair, the one he’s sitting on. The glass on the bed looks of dubious balance. The one in his hand has gone a bit warm, but he doesn’t feel like getting up again.

They continue the game and he tries to focus on the names and dates and crazy stories he and Daisy share a fascination for. Now that they have found out it is indeed _shared_.

He thinks they have ended up in Daisy’s room, hence the jacket on the chair. They didn’t want to end the evening - time flies when you are chatting about the ridiculousness of the Philadelphia Experiment, not getting the irony of them practically living inside a plane with a cloaking device - but the hotel bar was closing.

“Remote viewing? Yes or nay?” Daisy is asking, lying on her stomach on the bed.

Coulson hadn’t thought about it but - “Well, with what we know, it’s probably-”

“Probably Inhumans,” she says at the same time. “Dyatlov Pass?”

“Soviet Russia,” he replies. “Do I need say more?”

Daisy looks genuinely happy for a moment, or at least distracted, having a nice time, a nice night for once. Coulson wants to make that last for her, even if it means making a fool of himself and joking the Illuminati or whether Paul McCartney is really dead. Pretending he wasn’t involved in covering up worse things, or romanticizing the fact that this is the reason he ended meeting Daisy in the first place, a threat to the system, their system.

“I thought it was cute,” she says and he was a bit distracted.

“What?”

“That you - well, the other you, from over there. That he was so into this kind of stuff. It was nice, made me feel, you know, like someone got me.”

“I get you,” Coulson says without thinking.

The other Coulson would blush. He looks away. Daisy has some mercy, but her lips also curl like a happy secret.

“The Bilderberg Group?” she says, giving him a way out.

“Seems far-fetched.”

“A group of a dozen rich white dudes controlling the world from the shadows? Oh, absolutely true.”

“I remember your podcast on the Lizard Man of… what was it? Somewhere in South Carolina?”

He’s convinced that if her cheeks weren’t dark pink from the scotch her blushing would be evident right now.

“Scape Ore Swamp,” she finishes, very dignified. “And that was more like an entertainment podcast, not a real Rising Ti- you know what? _No_. I stand by my findings on the Lizard Man.”

“You blamed it on us!”

“Can you tell me, without doubt, that SHIELD didn’t have anything to do?”

One: he really can’t do that. And two: Coulson feels like he hasn’t been this happy or distracted in ages, either.

She has her hand hanging out from over the bed. She is wearing a silver bracelet - Coulson recognizes it from the storage rooms, the undercover stuff. A prop. He wonders if Daisy owns something valuable, or how many things she really owns. Or how many things _he_ own, if we’re on the subject. Most is paid with SHIELD money, not even his clothes are his own. Daisy’s pale red dress isn’t hers. He reaches out his hand and taps his fingers softly on her wrists, like he is trying to get her attention, except he already had it.

“Since when?” she asks.

“The conspiracies? A teenager - that’s when you normally pick up those things. You smoke some pot,” he says and enjoys Daisy’s raised eyebrows. “And you get all _fuck the government_.”

“And then you start talking about how the Army poisons civilians with cadmium sulfide.”

“It was 1950, no one knew it caused cancer.”

“And now you’re defending the government,” Daisy sighs. Loudly.

“Sorry,” he says, reaching out agains and squeezing her hand for a moment, just a little touch. “Habit. Bad habit. I’m just a bit rusty. _Fuck the government_.”

Now it’s Daisy reach out and giving his left hand a friendly slap. “You should work on that.”

Yeah, he should. He’s trying. 

“That’s how Fury tempted me,” he confesses. “He promised I’d have access to all those mysteries.”

She makes a curious impressed little sound, like a “uh” but softer.

“SHIELD really knows how to lure people in.”

There’s something in her tone. Familiarity. Experience.

“How did I do it?” he asks. “With you?”

Daisy smiles and looks away. After a moment of thinking about it Coulson realizes it was pretty simple.

“I said you could _help_ ,” he says.

A subtle little nod hiding behind her glass - this time she doesn’t take a sip, just looks pensive. He flexes the fingers of his prosthetic, the illusion of numbness, as if his artificial tendons and nerves could be affected by alcohol.

“The Mothman?” she offers. “Or is that going too far?”

 

**3.**

She’s kissing him, he’s pretty sure, but he’s also pretty sure he started it (how? when has he ever been that brave?). He is on his knees on the bed, implausibly, and Daisy is grabbing him by the collar of his shirt.

“We’re not too drunk, right? We’re okay, right?” she asks, making sure.

He doesn’t feel too drunk. He feels a lot of “too”s but not drunk.

“I’m fine. You?”

She nods, and kisses him briefly again, lowering her mouth to the pulsepoint on his neck.

“This isn’t too weird, is it?” Coulson asks in turn.

“What?”

“This,” he replies, gesturing between them, but that gesture could mean anything from _I’m way too old for you_ to _I thought I was meant to be a father figure_. He feels oddly not-weirded out by it (and also feels that he might not be too drunk to have sex with the most extraordinary person he’s ever met, but he’s too drunk for proper grammar and slang), but he worries this could be a line Daisy regrets crossing, if she thinks about it.

She shakes her head. “You’re Coulson,” she says. “This is the least weird thing ever, if I’m honest.”

She gives it a little shrug, going pensive, and Coulson wonders what kind of realization she has come to. Maybe the same he came to five minutes or five years ago.

“Good,” he says, holding her face in his hands and kissing her softly. “But you can call me Phil if you want.”

“Phil,” Daisy repeats. Then her eyes turn bright. “ _Finally_. It’s taken me years to get a _Phil_ out of you.”

They laugh, and fall into each other’s arms. Coulson regrets not asking her to call him by his first name years ago, but also he doesn’t regret it, because maybe they wouldn’t have ended up in this hotel room together, tonight. Any variation might have disturbed the path that led them here and Coulson feels a pang of despair at the idea that taking a wrong turn and he wouldn’t be kissing Daisy Johnson right this minute, he wouldn’t be pressing her body against the mattress or flattening his palms against the fabric of her dress over her thigh, feeling the warmth underneath.

Her hands finds him, find his belt, and Coulson realizes there’s something to be said for all those years of SHIELD training, the body he got out of them, able to weather alcohol and nerves like this. He remembers the other Phil Coulson’s body, feeble and untrained and warm and comfortable. Without scars. Maybe Daisy deserves a body more like that, a softer version of himself. She seems to want this one anyway, mouth and fingers and carefulness around buttons. He tries to follow her lead, but hunger and disbelief and desperation, he needs somewhere to fall, and soon he gets his hand under her classy dress and-

“Fuck,” Daisy says, out loud.

He presses a smile against her shoulder, the strap dropping, dropped. But it’s not a smug smile. It’s not a “look what I did” smile. It’s just he’s only heard Daisy swear under her breath and when she is positive no one is around her.

How did this start? he wonders as she curls her body towards his touch. With Lee Harvey Oswald, impossibly. Impossible. Possible. Happening. She turns her face towards him, her mouth sweet like scotch. Of course it's not weird, he finally agrees, and it’s okay, he gets places just a little slower than Daisy, he’s just glad to arrive.

“Condoms?” she asks.

“Not really,” he shrugs. Neither of them had even thought about the possibility.

“We can do other stuff?” she offers.

He nods with enthusiasm, drunk and joyful.

They undress, glad to use the drink and the strange hotel room as excuse to look at each other nakedly, pun intended, without excuse. Coulson thinks of all the things Daisy has been through and is surprised at the relative lack of scars on her body - half alien, he remembers, wondering, remembers it’s the reason they are in this city in the first place - but the few she has are more than enough. He tries to will himself to be more modest about his own body, probably too old for her anyway, but he wants Daisy to love it, to touch it, so he offers it up without reservation. She maneuvers them both, Coulson on his back, Daisy with her knees above his shoulders, bending over his cock. He smirks when he realizes what she is trying to do.

“Now _this_ brings me back to the 70s,” he says, touching the back of her thighs.

“Show off,” Daisy replies, bringing her mouth down.

His eyes close and his toes curls, very much 1970s material, all that is missing it’s his Nico t-shirt, except he wouldn’t want to be that young again or have met Daisy earlier or change a single line of tonight’s script. He’s Phil Coulson, in this world, not the other, arching his body to push his tongue inside her, arching his body against her mouth, a mess of mirthful sloppy drunken perfect sex.

Daisy stops, looking at him over his shoulder, looking frustrated.

“Wow, 69s are really uncomfortable,” Daisy says.

“Sorry, it’s been a while, I didn’t remember.”

They sit on the bed, facing each other. 

“That’s better,” she says, stroking his cheeks. “Let me look at you.”

Coulson swallows dry at the words, at the reverential tone, at the idea of being precious to someone, to someone like Daisy Johnson.

“Okay,” he agrees.

They get each other off between rush and patient, lying on their sides, face to face like Daisy wanted. He wanted it too, but to be scrutinized like this while she touches him, while her fingers and her breath on his neck, is overwhelming, too much. Too much, finally a “too” in here, so he concentrates on her, her face, her eyelashes, the parted lips, the noiseless pleasure, he twists her fingers searching for a wider smile, more sweat, a word, his name, or anything as long as it’s anything more, and something she deserves, something beautiful and good like her. He comes almost without noticing, fixed on her face. It’s release like a cheap turn of phrase, but so true. He thinks he laughs a bit, and then Daisy comes and then Daisy grabs him by the wrist and keeps his hand still, his fingers inside, like she can’t let go, pressing her thighs together and against his knuckles.

Afterwards she is looking at him with big, expectant eyes, and Coulson knows that look, she’s half convinced any moment he is going to tell her that this was a mistake and he wants nothing to do with her. Daisy is always expecting people to tell her they want nothing to do with her but… who wouldn’t want something to do with her?

“So,” he starts and almost regrets delaying it when he sees Daisy tense up, ready for the blow, she shouldn’t have to endure the cruelty of one more second. “The Bennington Triangle. What do you think is going on there?”

He can feel Daisy’s vibrations relax even before her muscles do. Is that her powers or is it his affinity?

“Copycats,” she says.

“Copycats?”

“The first disappearance was real but probably a freak accident, that’s why they never found the dude. Then people started going there to fake their own abductions, and then start a new life.”

Coulson follows her logic. “So the authorities would think it’s something supernatural instead of following their trails.”

She nods slowly and proudly. 

“The perfect cover.”

“Not a bad idea,” he admits, letting the conspiracy theory nut in him - the fuck-the-government seventeen year old from this world, the Hydra-fearing middle-aged teacher from the other world, both waiting for Daisy to find them.

“Like seriously,” she goes on, her voice filling the room with her animation and cleverness. “Could you imagine anything supernatural happening _in Vermont_?”

“You’d be surprised,” Coulson says, moving closer, using the same flirty tone in which he’d say _it’s classified_ to a beautiful woman.

Daisy stretches with pleasure, cat-like, as if all the cells in her body were hopping and reconfiguring.

“Oh my, Agent Coulson, any secret you care to share with our listeners?” she asks.

Closer still, leg insinuating between hers, “I’ll think about it, going on the record with an ex- _member_ of the _Rising_ Tide, it’s a _hard_ decision, it’s _highly sensitive material_.”

Daisy’s eyes wide, words and laughter warmly touching Coulson’s lips.

“OhmyfuckinggodPhil.”


End file.
